The conventional coupling between the engine's power piston and the crankshaft is very inefficient. Take the diesel, for instance. The fuel charge is fired when the piston is at, or very near top dead center (TDC). The moment arm is at or close to zero, or even negative. The combustion takes place so fast that a significant part of the power loaded combustion gases rush past the piston into the crankcase where it serves only to dirty the lube oil while another significant part is wasted as excess heat. The power carried by the bypass gases should be imparted to the piston for transmission to the power output shaft.
The present trend in engine design is to increase engine rpm using the conventional piston rod. The piston stroke is short and the time available for drawing air into the combustion chamber is very short. This causes combustion at less than the ideal 15:1 air/fuel ratio for the hydrocarbon fuel which, in turn, leaves unburned fuel to be exhausted as pollutants into the atmosphere. With the exhausted unburned fuel goes wasted energy which should have been converted to power to drive the piston. A greater quantity of air is then pumped into the combustion chamber for each charge with turbo or super chargers, often using intercoolers. Additional expensive intake valves are also placed in each cylinder to facilitate the additional air intake. All these techniques require rapidly moving additional parts and their precise synchronization which leads to more frequent and expensive engine break downs. Other disadvantages of this trend could be cited. The present trend really just covers up the real problem, which is the inefficient coupling between the piston rod and crankshaft, rather than removing the problem.
One of the best ways to surmount the inefficiency in the piston rod/crankshaft coupling is to create a fixed length moment arm extending from the axis of the crankshaft to a point where the entire force of the piston is perpendicularly applied to the moment arm. This solution places higher torque power at the output shaft. High torque power is what is needed by cars, trucks and other surface vehicles as well as helicopters and ships.
The inventors' earlier invention, "LINEAR RECIPROCATING PISTON ENGINE", U.S. Pat. No. 4,498,430 as corrected, disclosed a mechanism that applied the piston's force perpendicularly to a fixed length moment arm to rotate the output shaft. The present invention uses the same principle. However, timing gears and an oscillating gear found in the earlier invention have been eliminated from the present invention to lower the manufacturing costs and reduce the number of moving parts.